IMPOSING COMPASSION

Today the city and county of Santa Cruz, along with six patients, will file
suit in federal district court against Attorney General John Ashcroft,
"drug czar" John Walters and acting Drug Enforcement Administration honcho
John Brown to prevent them from carrying out future raids on a local
medical marijuana garden.

The suit is unique in several respects and should raise enough substantive
issues to prevent the federal officers who raided the garden last September
from future aggression against sick and dying people.

Last September's raid seized plants and equipment from the Wo/Men's
Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a collective of patients organized
to provide for their own medical marijuana in compliance with Proposition
215, which California voters approved in 1996.

WAMM is probably the most scrupulous, squeaky-clean marijuana patients'
organization in California. Only physician-certified patients are accepted
as members, they all do what they can to help grow their own medicine and
assist with other needs, the medicine is never shared outside the
organization and no money changes hands.

The federal raid was obviously intended to intimidate patients, to serve
notice that no matter how scrupulous the procedures, the authorities might
raid. The fact that it resulted only in property being seized but no
charges being filed against WAMM's organizers, Valerie and Mike Corral,
suggests that the feds knew they were on uncertain legal ground. This
lawsuit could well undercut the legal basis for such raids.

As Judy Appel, an attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance, explained to us,
the suit is based on the constitutional right of citizens to manage their
own pain and the circumstances under which they die. It argues that since
WAMM engages in no commerce (let alone interstate commerce) the federal
government has no constitutionally legitimate authority to control it. And
the city and county of Santa Cruz argue that the raids interfere with their
10th Amendment rights, as government entities, to regulate and control the
health and safety of their citizens.

Anybody who takes the U.S. Constitution seriously should agree.